Church, office close

Catholic Charities of the Albany Diocese will close its Hispanic Outreach Services office at the end of the month, but create a new diocesan commission to continue serving the Hispanic community, an official said last week.

Faced with an overall budget shortfall, Catholic Charities will eliminate several positions and work with community partners to prioritize crisis services. Existing case management and translation services will continue in some counties.

"As Catholic Charities faces today's financial realities and responds with difficult but necessary decisions, every effort is being made to maintain core services," wrote Michele Kelly, chief fiscal officer, in a statement.

Hispanic Outreach Services - which served the growing Hispanic communities in Al-bany, Schenectady, Rensselaer and Montgomery counties - had previously lost public funding and closed service sites in Troy and Schenectady.

For more than two decades, program staff had taken particular pride in helping new Americans get acclimated with public assistance, child support, job training, nursing home placement, youth mentoring and more.

Church to close
St. Joseph's Church in Green Island, a worship site of Immaculate Heart of Mary parish in Watervliet/Green Island, will close by the end of August, the parish announced recently.

The fate of the parish's two other worship sites, St. Brigid's and St. Patrick's Churches in Watervliet, is still being decided. One will be used as a temporary worship site until the parish's final home, Immaculate Conception Church in Watervliet, is renovated.

The announcement about St. Joseph's came months after a decision to merge Immaculate Heart of Mary's three worship sites for financial reasons.

Eventually, the parish plans to use Immaculate Conception as its sole worship site. Hundreds of parishioners have met in recent months to discuss the renovations.

Despite disagreements about design plans and hurt feelings about the closure of existing worship sites, Rev. L. Edward Deimeke, pastor, has urged parishioners to unite.

"There's attachment to buildings, but there's support for uniting and coming together in a single worship site," he said in a previous interview with The Evangelist.

Many parishioners regret that St. Patrick's, a towering, cathedral-like building, won't be used as the common space. But the more than 100-year-old site would have cost $5 million to update, Father Deimeke said.

(07/22/10)